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Director M. Night Shyamalan is known as a contemporary master of suspense, and for good reason. His famous “Unbreakable” trilogy – composed of “Unbreakable” (2000), “Split” (2016) and “Glass” (2019) – is a gritty series of thrillers about superheroes in the real world.

Unfortunately, his latest thriller is a letdown. “Trap” (2024) has an eccentric Shyamalan-esque premise: a pop concert full of teenage fans is actually a setup to catch a serial killer dubbed The Butcher, who is at the concert with his young daughter.

As a big fan of “Unbreakable” and “Split,” I bought tickets for “Trap” the minute they became available. Public reaction to the film has been mixed with a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. Some diehard Shyamalan fans are defending it, but for me, it was a flop.

The first act of the film lives up to its trailer. The Butcher, whose real name is Cooper (Josh Hartnett), goes head to head with concert event staff and attempts to outsmart their exhaustive procedures to catch him. As time runs out, he outsmarts the staff and manages to escape, but from there, the film goes downhill.

Part of the movie’s magic at its outset is a Hitchcockian contained setting. Keeping the audience and the characters stuck in one place, like Alfred Hitchcock does in “Rear Window” (1954) and Shyamalan does in the first half of “Trap,” heightens the stakes. Once the characters exit the venue and leave the setting behind, “Trap” loses most of its suspense.

The second half of the film bites off more than it can chew. While the beginning is a simple escape story, the end tries to incorporate too many elements and becomes ridiculous. By adding so many new subplots, Shyamalan loses the thread of the plot and muddles the story.

Shyamalan movies have been criticized repeatedly for unrealistic, out-of-place dialogue, and “Trap” was no exception. The script gives the entire project a strange tone and a level of unseriousness that hurts the film, rather than giving it character.

For some Shyamalan fans, his quirky style and awkward moments are part of his charm, but for me, his best work is done when he takes his plots seriously. “Trap” can’t be a cutting thriller in the first half and a horror comedy in the second. He has to choose.

Besides unrealistic dialogue, the last half of the film suffers from a series of ridiculous premises that threaten the audience’s suspension of disbelief. The FBI agents tasked with arresting Cooper are humorously unskilled.
The agents are so inept that the pop star performing at the concert eventually has to lead them to the killer herself. In a bizarre bathroom face-off, she livestreams from her phone to mobilize fans for help.

The entire sequence is tough for the audience to swallow, especially after an exciting escape for The Butcher. It feels like two different movies — one with five stars, and one with barely three stars.

Along with his reputation for thrillers and plot twists, Shyamalan has long had a fascination with mental illness in his characters. He received criticism for his usage of dissociative identity disorder as a plot point in “Split.” Critics said his portrayal harmed the mental health community, specifically people with DID.

In “Trap,” Shyamalan depicts The Butcher as a killer with obsessive-compulsive disorder. He deals with urges, from relatively normal urges like arranging things neatly to brutal urges of killing. It is unclear in the film whether or not he is a serial killer purely because of his OCD, but it contributes to his murders. Either way, Shyamalan continued his controversial decision to write his criminal characters as mentally ill.

The last scene of “Trap” is a joke about The Butcher escaping his handcuffs simply to fix his hair, making fun of OCD behavior. Shyamalan should consider his social responsibility as a filmmaker with these scenes — and whether he is using these parts of life to tell interesting stories or simply create fodder for jokes.

Though a conversation about mental illness in Shyamalan movies is important, Trap has plenty of other problems too. Beyond its potential ethical issues, at its core it is a thriller that falls apart after an hour.

In “Trap,” Shyamalan battles his Achilles heel of consistency and loses, delivering a subpar movie. In his next film, I hope he commits to one cohesive plot. Until then, I’ll be rewatching “Unbreakable.”

Published on August 26, 2024 at 9:29 pm